Brazil: Corumbiara and Eldorado de Carajas: Rural violence, political brutality and impunity

1 January 1998, Index number: AMR 19/001/1998

In the space of nine months in 1995 and 1996, Brazil witnessed two brutal massacres of landless peasants by military police in the Amazonian states of Rondonia and Para. A number of unsatisfactory investigations were opened, and in both cases police attempted to obstruct investigations and to manipulate and destroy evidence. AI urges the state governments of Rondonia and Para to suspend from active duty immediately the military police accused of these massacres, to ensure that all the relatives of those killed, in addition to those wounded, in the massacre receive compensation.